Man looks for his wife(Translated, from the Hebrew, by Jill Sand D’Angelo and Amos Oz)

T he old village of Tel Ilan was surrounded by orchards and groves. Vineyards grew on the slopes of its eastern hills, and its houses’ red-tiled roofs suffocated under the thick foliage of ancient almond trees. Many of the townspeople continued the tradition of farming with the aid of migrant workers, who lived in ramshackle huts. Some leased out their land, turning to cottage industry and running bed-and-breakfasts, art galleries, and trendy boutiques, while others found work elsewhere. In the town square were two gourmet restaurants as well as a local-wine merchant and a pet store specializing in tropical fish. One of the villagers had opened a workshop manufacturing pseudo-antique furniture. On weekends, Tel Ilan was flooded with tourists and bargain hunters. But on Fridays at noon everything shut down for the day, and the residents took siestas behind closed shutters.

Benny Avni, the head of the District Council of Tel Ilan, was a lanky man with stooped shoulders and a fondness for rumpled clothes and oversized sweaters, which gave him an ursine look. He walked pitched forward with a stubborn gait, as if he were fighting a strong headwind. His face was pleasant, his brow high, his mouth gentle, and his brown eyes warmly inquisitive, as if to say, Yes, I like you, and yes, I want to know more about you. He possessed a gift for refusing without the refusee realizing that he had just been refused.

At 1 P.M. on a Friday in February, Benny Avni sat alone in his office answering letters from concerned citizens. The municipal offices closed early on Fridays, but Benny Avni made a point of staying late at the end of the week, personally responding to every letter. After he finished, he intended to go home, have lunch, take a shower, and nap until dusk. On Friday evenings, Benny Avni and his wife, Nava, sang in an amateur choir group at Dalia and Avraham Levine’s house, at the end of Beth Hashoeva Lane.

As he was answering the last few letters, he heard a hesitant knock at the door. His sparsely furnished office, a temporary facility he used while the municipal building underwent renovations, contained little more than a desk, two chairs, and a filing cabinet.

Benny Avni said, “Come in,” and looked up from his papers.

Into the room walked a young Arab named Adel, a former student who was now the resident gardener at Rachel Franco’s estate, at the edge of the village, near the graveyard’s stand of cypress trees.

Benny Avni smiled. “Sit down.”

But, rather than sit, Adel, a small, thin man with glasses, hovered sheepishly near Benny Avni’s desk, lowered his head respectfully, and apologized, saying, “Am I disturbing you? I know the office is closed.”

“Never mind. Sit.”

Adel hesitated, then perched on the edge of the chair, his erect posture insuring that he did not touch the back of the furniture. “It’s like this: your wife saw me walking in your direction and told me to drop this off. Actually, it’s a letter.”

Benny Avni reached out and took the folded note from Adel. “Where exactly did you see her?”

“Near the Memorial Park.”

“Which way was she walking?”

“She wasn’t. She was sitting on a bench.”

Adel rose to his feet, paused, then asked if there was anything else he could do.

Benny Avni smiled and shrugged his shoulders. “That will be all.”

Adel said, “Thank you very much,” and left.

Benny Avni unfolded the note, which was written on a page torn from Nava’s kitchen notebook. In her circular handwriting, he saw the following four words: “Don’t worry about me.”

He was baffled by these words. He and Nava always ate lunch together: at noon, she would leave the primary school where she taught and would wait for him to arrive home for lunch. After seventeen years of marriage, Nava and Benny still loved each other, but their daily interactions were characterized by a measure of mutual politeness mixed with suppressed impatience. She didn’t like his bureaucratic dabblings; nor did she like the way his work followed him home or the evenhanded congeniality that he dispensed abundantly and indiscriminately. He, for his part, was growing tired of her enthusiastic devotion to sculpting artistic figurines, which she fired in a kiln in their back yard. He found the smell of burned clay that lingered in her clothes to be sickening.

Benny Avni dialled his own number and let it ring eight or nine times before agreeing with himself that Nava was not there. He thought it strange that she had left before he got home, and even stranger that she had sent the note via Adel without bothering to say where she had gone or when she would be back. The note puzzled him, and he found the messenger dubious. But he did not worry: he and Nava always left each other notes under the vase in the living room.

Benny Avni finished writing his last two letters—one to Ada Dvash, concerning the renovation of the post office, and the other to the council’s treasurer, concerning the pension plan of an employee. He placed the outgoing mail on a shelf, checked the windows and shutters, put on his suède jacket, locked both deadbolts, and left. He planned to walk through the Memorial Park, past the bench where Nava might still be sitting, so that they could go home together. However, after a few steps, he returned to his office, because he thought he might have forgotten to turn off his computer, or maybe he had left the light on in the bathroom? But the computer was off and the bathroom dark, so Benny Avni locked both deadbolts again and went to look for his wife.

Nava wasn’t on the bench in the Memorial Park. She wasn’t anywhere. But Adel, the thin young student, was there, sitting alone, an open book face down on his lap. He was staring at the street while a sparrow sang in the trees above. Benny Avni placed his hand on Adel’s shoulder and asked gently, as if afraid of hurting him, “Wasn’t Nava here?” Adel replied that she was here before, but not anymore.

“I can see that she is gone,” Benny Avni said, “but I thought that perhaps you knew where she went?”

Adel said, “Forgive me. I’m really very sorry.”

Benny Avni responded, “That’s O.K. It’s not your fault.”

He headed home along Synagogue Street and the Tribes of Israel Street, walking at an angle, his body tilted slightly forward, as if struggling with an invisible force. Everyone he met along the way greeted him with a smile; Benny Avni was a popular head of council. He smiled warmly in return, asking, “How are you?” or “What’s new?,” occasionally reporting that the issue of the crack in the sidewalk was currently being resolved. Very soon, everyone would be at home eating lunch and then napping, and the streets of the village would be empty.

His front door wasn’t locked, and in the kitchen the radio was playing softly. Someone was discussing the evolution of the commuter railway system and the obvious advantage of trains over cars. In vain, Benny Avni looked in the regular place—under the vase in the living room—for a note from Nava. On the kitchen table his lunch awaited him, a plate covered with an inverted plate to keep warm: chicken, mashed potatoes, cooked carrots, and green beans. A knife and fork sat on either side of the plate, and, under the fork, a folded cloth napkin. Benny Avni put his lunch in the microwave for two minutes, because, despite the makeshift lid, the food was nearly cold. While waiting, he opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of beer, which he poured into a mug. As soon as his lunch was ready, he ate hungrily but without paying attention to what he was eating, listening to the radio, which was now broadcasting light music punctuated by endless advertisements. During one ad, he thought he heard Nava’s footsteps on the front path? He looked through the kitchen window, but the yard was empty and all he could see, among the thistles and scrap iron, was a dilapidated cart with two rusty wheels.

After lunch, he put his dishes in the sink and turned off the radio. A deep silence prevailed. Only the ticking of the wall clock could be heard. His twin daughters, Yuval and Inbal, were on a field trip to Upper Galilee. He walked down the hallway to take a shower and saw that the door to the girls’ room was closed. He peeked inside the darkened room. A light smell of soap and ironing hovered in the air. He shut the door quietly and continued toward the bathroom. He took off his shirt and pants, but then, in his underwear, suddenly changed his mind and approached the phone. He wasn’t worried, but nonetheless he kept asking himself, Where could Nava have gone, and why hadn’t she been waiting for him at lunchtime as always?

He called Gila Steiner and asked if Nava was there.

Gila said, “No. Why? Did she say she was coming over?”

Benny Avni said, “That’s the thing. She didn’t say where she was going.”

Gila said, “The general store closes at two. Maybe she stopped by to get something.”

Nevertheless, he looked up the phone number for the general store. It rang for a long time. Finally, the nasal tenor of Old Man Lieberson responded in a cantorial singsong, “Yes, please? Here speaks Shlomo Lieberson of the store. How might we help?”

Benny Avni asked about Nava. Old Man Lieberson replied sadly, “No, Comrade Avni, I’m sorry, your fetching wife has not enlisted here today. We have not yet had the pleasure. And I am thinking it is unlikely we will, for at exactly fourteen hundred hours we are closing operations and retiring to our domicile to prepare ourselves for receiving the Queen Sabbath.”

Benny Avni walked into the bathroom, finished undressing, waited for the hot water to manifest, and took a long shower. He thought he heard the door squeaking and so, when drying himself, called out, “Nava? Is that you?” But there was no response. He put on clean underwear and a pair of khakis and left the bathroom, searched the kitchen, went to the living room and checked the easy chairs facing the TV, then walked into the bedroom and out onto the enclosed terrace that Nava used as her “creative studio.” She would shut herself in on the terrace for long hours, sculpting figurines in clay, fantasy creatures as well as tiny busts of boxers with square jaws and sometimes broken noses. The kiln was in a shed in their back yard. So Benny walked to the shed and turned on the light and stood there for a moment, blinking, but all he could see were the disfigured figurines and the cool kiln, surrounded by dark shadows, which also covered the dusty shelves.

Benny Avni asked himself if he should just lie down and stop waiting for Nava. He returned to the kitchen to put his dishes in the dishwasher. He looked inside for any clue as to whether she’d eaten before she left, or perhaps she hadn’t had lunch at all? But the dishwasher was almost full, and there was no way to judge which plates might have been used earlier that day and which had been there before.

A pot of cooked chicken sat on the stove. But there was no indication as to whether Nava had eaten and then left some extra chicken for him or whether she hadn’t eaten at all. Benny Avni sat by the phone and dialled Batya Rubin. The phone rang ten, then fifteen times. No one answered. Benny said to himself, Don’t be silly!, and went to the bedroom for his siesta. At the foot of the bed were Nava’s slippers: small, slightly worn at the heels, and colorful, like a pair of toy boats. He lay motionless, with his eyes fixed on the ceiling. Nava was easily offended, and over the years he had learned that any attempt to appease her verbally only made things worse. So he opted to practice restraint and let the passage of time assuage her anger. She would overcome but not forget. Once, her best friend, Dr. Gila Steiner, had approached him with the idea of exhibiting a show of Nava’s figurines in the council’s gallery. Benny Avni had emphatically promised to consider it. Ultimately, though, he had decided that it would be too risky: Nava’s sculptures were, after all, no more than the work of an amateur housewife, and her exhibit would be better suited to one of the primary school’s galleries, in order to avoid rumors of nepotism. Nava had said nothing, but for a few nights she had stood in the bedroom ironing until three or four in the morning. She had ironed everything—even the towels and the throw rugs.

After twenty minutes, Benny Avni suddenly got up, went down to the basement, and turned on the light, igniting a whole swarm of insects. He surveyed boxes and suitcases, fingered the electric drill, tapped on the wine barrel, which echoed with a dim hollowness. Then he turned off the light, went upstairs to the kitchen, hesitated for a moment, put his suède jacket on over his bulky sweater, and left the house without locking the door. He strode forward at a pitched angle, as if fighting a harsh headwind, and went to look for his wife.

On Friday afternoons the village streets were empty. Everyone was resting in preparation for the night’s festivities. The day was gray and moist, with low clouds weighing on the rooftops and a thin fog floating below. Slumber wrapped each shuttered house. The February midday wind carried a scrap of newspaper, which Benny tracked down and put in the trash. Near the Veterans’ Garden, a large mongrel dog began to follow him, growling and baring his teeth. Benny Avni scolded the dog, which became fiercer and looked nearly ready to pounce. Benny Avni grabbed a stone and hurled it into the air. The dog recoiled, tail between his legs; still, he followed Benny Avni from a safe distance. And so the two of them continued, about ten metres apart, turning left onto the Street of the Founders. Here, too, all the shutters were closed for the siesta. Most were painted a faded gray, some with their wooden cross braces crooked or missing.

Over the years, the well-tended front gardens of Tel Ilan had been abandoned to oblivion. Benny Avni saw, here and there, decrepit dovecotes, livestock stables turned into shops, the skeleton of an old truck sunk to its hips in savage growth beside a deserted tin shed or an empty doghouse. Two ancient palms had once grown in his own front garden, but four years ago Nava had insisted that they be cut down, because the swish of their fronds against the bedroom window kept her awake at night and filled her with sorrow.

Jasmine and asparagus grew in some of the yards, while in others there were weeds under the tall palms, gossiping in the wind. Benny Avni paddled along, his arms moving in unison, as he passed the Tribes of Israel Street. In the Memorial Park he stopped for a moment at the bench where, according to Adel, Nava had been sitting when she gave him the note that said “Don’t worry about me.”

As Benny Avni paused at this bench, the mongrel dog also paused, ten metres away. He was neither growling nor baring his teeth but was now studying Benny with a wise, inquisitive look. Nava had become pregnant when they were unmarried students in Tel Aviv—she at the Teachers Seminary, and he at business school. Immediately, they had agreed to get an abortion, but two hours before the scheduled appointment, for 10 A.M. at the private clinic on Reines Street, Nava had changed her mind and asked to call it off. She had put her head on his chest and cried. He had implored her to be reasonable—after all, there really wasn’t any choice, given their circumstances, and the procedure itself was no more complicated than the extraction of wisdom teeth. He’d waited for her in the café across the street and read yesterday’s papers, including the sports sections. Less than two hours later, Nava had appeared, looking pale. They’d splurged on a taxi back to their dorm room, where six or seven noisy students were waiting for Benny, assembled for a previously scheduled committee meeting. Nava lay in bed in the corner of their room, hiding under the blankets. But the arguments, the shouting and jokes and cigarette smoke penetrated the blankets, and she was seized with weakness and nausea and she felt her way along the walls to the bathroom, and her head spun and the pain returned as the anesthesia wore off, and in the stall she saw that someone had vomited on the floor and the toilet seat and she couldn’t control herself: she vomited, too. She hid there for a long time, weeping, her head in her arms, arms against the wall, until all the noisy guests had gone and Benny found her trembling. Holding her by the shoulders, he guided her gently to bed. Two years later, they married, but Nava had trouble conceiving. They consulted different doctors touting different treatments. After five years, the twin girls were born, Yuval and Inbal. Nava and Benny had never again discussed that particular afternoon in the dorm; it was as if they had silently agreed that there was nothing to say. Nava taught school and sculpted figurines. Eventually, Benny Avni was elected head of the Tel Ilan District Council, where he was widely liked, owing to his attentive ear and modest disposition. Nonetheless, he knew how to overpower, and this he practiced without the overpowered ever noticing that they were being overpowered.

At the corner of Synagogue Street, he stopped for a moment and checked to see if the mongrel was still following him. The dog stood by one of the garden gates, his tail between his legs, his mouth slightly open, looking at Benny with patience and curiosity. Benny said in a low voice, “Come here,” and the dog, panting, pricked up his ears and flashed his pink tongue. Clearly, he was interested in Benny but determined to keep his distance. There was no other living soul to be seen in the village—not even a cat or a bird. There was only Benny Avni and the dog and the clouds, which had descended so low they nearly touched the tops of the cypress trees.

Near the elevated water tower was an underground public bomb shelter. Benny Avni tried the iron door. It was unlocked. He entered and groped for the light switch, but the electricity to the shelter had been cut off. Even so, he descended the twelve steps. A damp, filthy flare brushed against him as he made his way into the depths of the dark space, feeling his way among vague objects—a pile of mattresses, a deteriorating cabinet. He took a deep breath of the thick air, then turned around, finding his way back toward the steps. At the top of the stairs, he tried the dead light switch again, then closed the iron door behind him and walked out into the empty street.

The breeze had subsided, and the fog had become thicker, erasing the contours of the houses, some of which were more than a hundred years old. The buildings’ yellow stucco had cracked and crumbled, leaving intermittent bald spots on the walls. Gray pine trees grew in the yards. Walls of cypresses separated each house from the next. Occasionally he spotted an eroding baler or a rusting washtub in a tangle of overgrowing poison ivy, crabgrass, and morning glory.

Benny Avni whistled to the dog, but the mongrel kept his distance. In front of the synagogue—built when the village was founded, at the turn of the previous century—stood a kiosk displaying flyers for the local cinema and the winery, as well as posted notes from the council signed by Benny himself. Benny lingered over his notes, which for some reason seemed redundant or utterly false. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he saw a stooped figure at the end of the street, but when he turned his head he saw only shrubs in the fog. The synagogue was topped with a metal menorah and its doors were decorated with carved lions and Stars of David. He climbed the five steps and tried the door. Inside the sanctuary, the air was cold, dusty, and almost dark. Above the curtain-covered ark, by the light of a dim electric candle, he read the inscription: “The Lord Is Always Before Me.” Benny Avni wandered between the seats in the dark, then climbed the stairs to the women’s gallery. Scattered on the benches were shabby black prayer books. The smell of old sweat mingled with the smell of ancient bindings. He felt one of the seats with his hand, because, for a moment, he thought a shawl or a scarf had been left behind.

As he exited the synagogue, the mongrel was waiting for him at the foot of the stairs. This time he stomped his feet and said, “Go away! Scram!” The dog, on whose collar hung an identification tag, tilted his head and panted as if patiently awaiting an explanation. But no explanation came. Benny turned to go, his shoulders hunched and his bulky sweater peeking out from under his suède jacket, and he walked with broad strides, leaning forward like the figurehead of a ship breaking the waves. The dog followed, always keeping a safe distance.

Where had she gone? Perhaps she had decided to visit one of her girlfriends and had been delayed? Perhaps she’d been held late at school by some urgent matter? Perhaps she was at the clinic? A few weeks ago, when they were fighting, Nava had said that his kindness was like a mask, and under the mask: Siberia. He hadn’t responded, but had smiled affectionately, as he always did when she was angry. This had caused Nava to lose her temper and shout, “You don’t give a damn! Not about us or our children!” He’d continued to smile and had put his hand on her shoulder, but she’d thrown it off, storming out, slamming the door behind her. An hour later, he had entered her enclosed studio to give her a cup of hot herbal tea with honey. He had thought that she might be getting a slight cold. Which she wasn’t. But Nava had accepted the tea and said, “Thanks. That really wasn’t necessary.”

And maybe while he was wandering alone in the fog she had arrived home? He considered returning. But the thought of the empty house—in particular, the thought of the empty bedroom with her colorful slippers like toy boats at the foot of the bed—repelled him and made him continue. He walked, stoop-shouldered, along Hagefen Street and Tarpat Street, until he reached Nava’s primary school. Barely a month had passed since he’d won a debate against his District Council opponents and the Ministry of Education regarding the allocation of funds for four new classrooms and a large gymnasium.

The school’s metal gates were already locked for the Sabbath. Both the building and the playground were surrounded by an iron fence topped with barbed wire. Benny Avni circled the fence twice until he found a spot where he thought he could penetrate. He waved to the dog on the opposite sidewalk, held the iron bars, hoisted himself up, pushed aside the wire, got cut, and jumped inside, twisting his ankle slightly. He limped across the playground, the back of his hand bleeding.

He entered the building through a side door and found himself in a long hallway, off of which branched many classrooms. The odor of sweat, leftover food, and blackboard chalk filled the air. Orange peels and scraps of paper littered the hallway. Benny Avni walked through a half-open door into one of the classrooms. On the teacher’s desk sat a dusty blackboard eraser and a scribbled page from a notebook. He picked it up and examined the handwriting, which was indeed feminine but not Nava’s. Benny Avni returned the now bloodstained page to the desk and looked at the blackboard. In the same feminine handwriting were the words “The Solemn Village Life Versus the Booming City Life—please complete no later than Wednesday.” Under these instructions appeared the words “Read carefully at home the next three chapters and be prepared to answer all the questions at the back.” On the wall hung portraits of Theodor Herzl, the President of the State, and the Prime Minister, as well as some illustrated placards, one of which said “Nature-Lovers Preserve and Protect the Wildflowers.”

The desks were shoved together, likely a result of the students’ rushing to the door when the bell sounded. In the window boxes, neglected geraniums thirsted. Opposite the teacher’s desk hung a large map of Israel, with a thick green circle around the village of Tel Ilan, in the foothills of the Menashe region. An orphaned jacket hung on a hook.

Benny Avni left the classroom and continued, limping slightly, along the empty corridors, the dripping blood marking his path. As he reached the bathrooms at the end of the hallway, he felt compelled to enter the women’s facilities. There were five stalls. Benny Avni checked behind each door, even going so far as to investigate the janitorial-supply closet. He then turned down another hallway, and yet another, before he finally found the teachers’ lounge. Standing outside the door, he hesitated for a moment, fingering the inscription “Teachers Lounge—Students Not Allowed Without Permission,” as if it were written in Braille. It occurred to him that a meeting might be taking place, and he didn’t want to interrupt, yet at the same time he felt an urge to barge in. The lounge, however, was deserted and dark, its windows tightly closed and its curtains drawn. Two rows of bookshelves stood on either side of the room. Dead center was a long table, surrounded by approximately twenty chairs, and, on the table, empty and half-empty cups, a few books, class logs, and some pamphlets. By the farthest window he saw a large cabinet with a separate drawer for each teacher. He found Nava’s drawer, removed it, and placed it on the table. Inside, he found a pile of notebooks, a box of chalk, a few throat lozenges, and an empty sunglasses case. After some reflection, Benny replaced the drawer. At the end of the table, hanging on the back of a chair, was a scarf that looked familiar to him; it resembled one of Nava’s. But how could he be sure in this dim light? Nevertheless, he took it, used it to blot his bloody hand, then folded it and placed it in his jacket pocket. He left the teachers’ lounge, limping along the multi-doored hallway, peeking into every classroom as he passed. He tried the door of the school’s health center, glanced into the janitor’s office, and then finally left the building, exiting by a different door from the one through which he had entered. He limped across the playground, climbed the fence, held back the barbed wire, and jumped, this time at the expense of a sharp slice in the sleeve of his jacket.

He stood for a while at the foot of the fence, waiting without realizing what he was waiting for, until he saw the dog sitting on the opposite side of the street about ten metres away, looking at him with deep earnestness. It occurred to him to pet the dog. But the dog rose, stretched, and paced slowly forward, keeping his distance.

F or fifteen minutes, Benny Avni limped after the dog in the empty streets, bandaging his bleeding hand with the checkered scarf that might be Nava’s or maybe not. The low gray sky was tangling with the treetops as murky blotches of fog rested in the yards. Perhaps a few drops of rain touched his face, but he wasn’t sure and, frankly, didn’t care. He thought he saw a bird on a wall, but as he drew closer he realized that it was just an empty tin box.

Soon he came to a narrow lane between two tall hedges of bougainvillea. He’d recently authorized it to be repaved, and a few mornings ago had inspected it in person. From the lane, he again reached Synagogue Street. The dog walked ahead as if showing him the way. The light was even grayer than before. He asked himself, Would it not be better to go straight home? After all, she might have returned and was perhaps resting, puzzled by his absence, maybe even worried about him. But the thought of the empty house terrified him, and he went on, limping, following the dog, who never looked back, his muzzle lowered as if sniffing the way. Soon—possibly before dusk—a heavy rain would wash clean all the dusty trees and rooftops and sidewalks. He thought about what could have been but would likely never be. Then his thoughts wandered away. Nava was in the habit of sitting with the girls on the back porch, overlooking the lemon trees, the three of them talking in low voices. What they discussed he had never known, nor really cared to know. Yet now he cared but was clueless. He felt that he must reach a decision, but even though he was accustomed to making multiple decisions every day at work, he was suddenly seized with doubt, and had no idea what in the world was expected of him. In the meantime, the dog stopped and sat on the sidewalk ten metres away, and Benny followed suit, sitting on the Memorial Park bench where Nava had apparently been two or three hours earlier. He scooted himself to the middle of the bench, his bleeding hand wrapped in the scarf, his jacket buttoned up against the slight rain that was beginning to fall, and there he sat, waiting for his wife. ♦